Here’s mine: a large portion of the things that matter most in human life, including particularly most of the ways of life we originally evolved for, are swiftly becoming rare luxuries throughout the West, primarily at the behest of liberalism (which otherwise has produced many positives). Examples:
embeddedness in a small tribe where everyone knows everyone else
the expectation of having a loving mate and healthy family
spiritual connection with a symbolically rich world of mythology (which need not be materially “real” in order to be valuable)
veneration for the ancestors and the mighty dead, with recognition of oneself as a continuation of their being and as indebted to them
a sufficiently simple local reality that it can be modeled, understood, and predicted without information overload
emotional connection with nonhuman organisms, ecosystems, and the land in a web of respectful, honorable give and take
capacity for self-reliance and individual responsibility for survival and flourishing
a clear and unambiguous system of social roles on the basis of age, gender, lineage, etc, which is seen as legitimate by all
The reason I see the loss of these things as a terrible part of the “central plot” is because they are for the most part ignored, yet deeply important aspects of what it means to be human, which we are in danger of permanently losing even if ALL those other problems are solved. If people forget where we came from, and wholesale let go of the past and traditional values in favor of “progress” for its own sake, I think it will be a net loss regardless of how happy the abhuman things that we become will be. And the evidence is in my favor that these problems are making people miserable—just look at conservatives, who still are trying to hold on to these aspects of being human and seeing them threatened from every direction.
Here’s mine: a large portion of the things that matter most in human life, including particularly most of the ways of life we originally evolved for, are swiftly becoming rare luxuries throughout the West, primarily at the behest of liberalism (which otherwise has produced many positives). Examples:
embeddedness in a small tribe where everyone knows everyone else
the expectation of having a loving mate and healthy family
spiritual connection with a symbolically rich world of mythology (which need not be materially “real” in order to be valuable)
veneration for the ancestors and the mighty dead, with recognition of oneself as a continuation of their being and as indebted to them
a sufficiently simple local reality that it can be modeled, understood, and predicted without information overload
emotional connection with nonhuman organisms, ecosystems, and the land in a web of respectful, honorable give and take
capacity for self-reliance and individual responsibility for survival and flourishing
a clear and unambiguous system of social roles on the basis of age, gender, lineage, etc, which is seen as legitimate by all
The reason I see the loss of these things as a terrible part of the “central plot” is because they are for the most part ignored, yet deeply important aspects of what it means to be human, which we are in danger of permanently losing even if ALL those other problems are solved. If people forget where we came from, and wholesale let go of the past and traditional values in favor of “progress” for its own sake, I think it will be a net loss regardless of how happy the abhuman things that we become will be. And the evidence is in my favor that these problems are making people miserable—just look at conservatives, who still are trying to hold on to these aspects of being human and seeing them threatened from every direction.